KIEV, September 22. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Sunday he was initiating a fund for the restoration of infrastructure in the war-torn eastern Ukraine.

“This is the aim of my trips — to prepare a donor conference to set up a special fund. Among other funds, it will have those from the special fund of the Ukrainian budget for the restoration of infrastructure of Donbass (Donetsk and Luhansk regions),” the president said in an interview with several Ukrainian television channels. He said he was speaking about dozens of billions of hryvnias.

The Kiev government “will be giving money to those local authorities in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are legally elected,” he said.

At the same time, the president said Kiev would finance from the state budget the whole territory of the Luhansk and the Donetsk regions, including those controlled by militias.

“Our fellow countrymen live there, we must help them,” the president said.

The southeastern Ukrainian Donetsk and Luhansk regions have been the scene of fierce clashes between local militias and troops loyal to Kiev seeking to regain control over the breakaway territories, which on May 11 proclaimed their independence at local referendums and now call themselves the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics.

On September 5, the trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine (Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE) and representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics reached an agreement on ceasefire in Ukraine’s embattled southeast, troops’ withdrawal, exchange of prisoners and provision of humanitarian aid.

On Friday, the Contact Group signed a memorandum outlining the parameters for the implementation of the cease-fire commitments laid down in the Minsk Protocol of September 5.